Prisons
by InTruth
Summary: A recounting of possibly unfamiliar incidents on the Island. Inspired by, but not connected to the ABC diary. Please read and review, I don't want to give anything away in the summary!
1. Solitude

_Disclaimer: Nothing "Lost" is mine._

**Prisons**

Every night before I go to sleep, I pretend I'm somewhere else.

It doesn't matter where. Anywhere without sand.

By now, it feels like everything is sand. It is everywhere. In my eyes, in my mouth, in my uniform. I know the sky is burning above me, know the awful, empty water is stretching endlessly mocking as always, but somehow all that matters is the sand.

I tried to join the expedition group to the caves, to get away from it. But I couldn't go into the jungle. I wanted to, I needed to, but something kept pushing me away. Something like wind, or invisible hands running over and through me and turning me back. The leader was not happy with me. I'm used to it.

But all that day, I felt like there was something just behind me, or sitting on my shoulder. Something soft and cold that made me sick and ecstatic at the same time.

So I can't go back to the caves.

* * *

I don't dream anymore on the Island.

Before we came here, I dreamt all the time. I didn't even have to be asleep, I just had wonderful imaginary adventures in my head. I could escape whenever I wanted to.

But now, I can hardly remember what dreaming is like, how something can be so detached and unreal. Certainly not during the day, and even when I sleep, I feel half awake. Everything is so... blank.

I guess it's from sleeping on so much sand.

* * *

Everyone left for the caves today. 

We've been fighting for days about it, and finally someone suggested we take a vote. I didn't want to vote. I will stay on the sand until I die, if I have to. I tried to explain that I wasn't allowed to go with them, it wasn't my fault. I don't think they should have gone either, but I can't tell them what to do. I was not appointed the head of this party, even if I should have been.

They made me vote, though. They said it wouldn't be democratic otherwise.

What did they think would happen?

I'm still not sure why they didn't carry me in with them like they threatened. M. Robert is certainly strong enough.

I know they think I am crazy. I am used to that, too.

_I have some more in mind for this. Please let me know what you think. Without you, my muses just laugh and say "Yeah, right. Like that's gonna happen."_


	2. Survival

_Disclaimer: Nothing "Lost" is mine, alas._

**Survival**

This is my third morning alone on the sand.

Every day has been the same. I wake up from half sleep as the sun is rising. I spend the day walking fifty meters up and down the beach.

No farther.

I have not seen anyone else from the team since they left. It is as though the Jungle has swallowed them. I am sorry they didn't listen to me from the start, when we heard the transmission with the endless numbers. But I was democratically overruled.

It is on their own heads.

* * *

It has been a week since they left. My rations are almost gone. I am sure the team expected me to scamper to the Forrest with the first pangs of hunger. By now, they wonder if they underestimated me. Perhaps they plan on sending a peace offering when I will be too weak to refuse. So predictable, my longtime companions. 

Fools.

I should be worried. Someone else would panic, I am sure. I have five centimeters of water left, and two ounces of _beurre d'arachide_. Tomorrow, I will have nothing.

How can I be so impossibly calm? Fate is running her fingers through my hair, but I feel no fear. Not even sorrow.

I am... curious.

I am excited.

* * *

Last night, I dreamed. 

I dreamed that I was whispering through the Jungle. I moved fluidly, gracefully, as if I were silence herself. Vigor and life laced through limbs that were not quite corporeal. I did not know where I was going or why I was now allowed within the Jungle.

But I knew I has a purpose there, so I continued flying.

Until I saw the bunker.

It had been built haphazardly of the remnants of our ship, the battered strips of iron welded loosely together. There were old nails and crude wooden fastenings as well, but in my dreaming I saw what held the shelter together in truth.

Fear.

Stealthily, brimming with a glee that was only partly my own, I slid through the outer wall and into the partion where my once-comrades slept uneasily. They had set Robert as a sentinel, but I was hardly spirit by then and undetectable. Disdain was sour in my mouth for these ridiculous men and women who thought they knew nature, who thought themselves infallible.

They, and their children as well.

I went to Alex.

He had always been a beautiful child, but the time on the Island had imbued him with a wild, luminous aura that I could feel even as he slept. Only he, of the entire expedition slept peacefully anymore. This was a wonderful game for him, an outlet for the raw, savage talents society could not answer. He had been prepared.

The game was over.

I had dimly wondered if it would be difficult, or even how I would go about it. But I didn't even have to think. Alex exhaled softly, and I seized my opportunity.

There it was, the thread of his soul floating just beyond his lips. Before the boy could breathe again, I seized the gossamer strand and pulled.

I was flying through the Jungle to deliver my prize, driven by a need I did not understand...

...but the sun was kissing my face and I lay quite still on the ragged blanket over the sand.

_In time_, they whispered.


	3. Sickness

_Disclaimer: Nothing "Lost" is mine, alas._

_Author's Note: It may help to run certain certain French phrases and terms found in this story through an Internet translation. I have tried to give embed as many layers as I could into this story, because I think it becomes more enjoyable to the reader that way (and it was fun). I don't speak French either, but Google is my best friend._

_Forever Fan: Eternal gratitude. You are my new Muse._

**  
Sickness**

I am different. They have changed me.

I am... strong. I am light, and swift, and endurant. I leave footprints only at my whim, and I can dissolve into the merest specter at half a moment's warning.

I have not eaten in one week, but I feel no hunger. My body is ravaged by the sand and sun and surf, but there is no pain. Not numbness, not emptiness, just... nothing. And every day, my memories seem to fade further into the shadows of my mind, where they are lost.

I want to be angry. I want to cry and storm and rage, and plunge within my mind to scrape free the last of my past and guard it forever from this silent assault. I want...

I want to _feel_.

I don't think I am truly living anymore.

* * *

I cannot remember daytime. My living is locked into night.

When the sun sets, they rouse me from my sleep of death. They bathe me in their icy, bitter breath, and dress me in their rags of cruelty and possessiveness.

I cannot resist their vindictive intentions. I cannot escape from this whirlpool of such powerful evil. How long will it be before I drown, irrevocably captive in this forsaken quagmire?

Every night after they have amused themselves in my utter helplessness, I am again sent away to the bunker.

The numbers of my living once-comrades have fallen drastically. My masters scavenge daily now. I sense their perverse pleasure as they swell their ranks with men and women who were once of science, were once mothers and fathers. Who were recruited for an elite mission, and set out so misguided from a place I do not remember, for a reason that seemed of such vital importance at the time.

No. I am clean of their deaths. Let my benevolent masters take that burden upon their own backs.

But Alex...

Alex is my sin alone.

Every night, I am sent to him. Every night, I steal a thread of his soul and present it to my masters. Every night, they strengthen their terrible power over him.

And every morning, Alex has died a little bit more by my hands.

* * *

_There is some more to come, I believe._


	4. Surrender

_Disclaimer: Nothing "Lost" is mine, alas. Nor did I write "Rock-a-bye Baby."_

_Author's Note: I'm sorry this took so long. Hopefully Iwill update again soon, but my year is coming to a close, so I can't promise anything._

**Surrender**

Something is happening. Everything is different.

I am flooded with sight and smell, with hearing and touch. So much life after so long in death... I almost cannot stand it.

There is bark at my back. It is rough and wet and cool, and the moistness seeps through the rags of my uniform, making me shiver. There are ragged ropes bitting into my legs, torso and shoulders, binding me to this enormous edifice of nature. My arms are pinned motionless by my sides, and I am sweating through my shivers.

I don't know how I have gotten here, or why I have been bound like this. The only sound is of water dripping, slow, softly and somehow... sinister.

But I can see the sun.

It is as though I have never truly seen before, as though I have never been safe or warm or happy. It is the first time I have lived since the day I heard the numbers on the transmitter.

Here on this Island, this place of so much death and pain, I am finally safe. I am finally alive.

I am praying to die here, where I can see the sun.

* * *

The sound of the water has changed.

It is a beating now, an awful, steady throb like the pounding of some poisonous heart. The sound of it fills my chest and drowns my ears. It echoes around my skull, building like a tumor behind my eyes . Louder and louder and louder, until I cannot see for the strength of it.

_So loud..._

The bindings are cut.

I collapse insensible into the dirt. Seized by some impossible force, seized and dragged along rough wet ground and then cold wet stone. For hours, I think.

And then everything is still, except for the heart pounding forever. My pulse throbs in pitiful answer.

_Alex... Alex..._

Alex.

He is kneeling beside me, and I realize that I am resting on my knees and trembling with the terrible effort to remain upright. I don't expect to be able to move, but suddenly I am completely unbound. Free, in prison.

I could run away, escape. Fall back on the endless, baking sand and die there in the burnished gold haven of hell. I could run, if I had the strength.

I would run, if I had the will.

But my erstwhile masters are towering before us, and their whispers are almost swallowing the hypnotic beating heart. I can barely hear Alex's tortured breathing beside me.

_Le bébé de Roche-un-bye, sur la cime d'arbre..._

I cannot understand what they want. They have Alex. They have the expedition team. They have me.

_Quand le vent souffle, le berceau basculera..._

One final deed for me... and for Alex. Once more, before they have expended our usefullness and leached us dry of strength.

_Quand le bough se casse, le berceau tombera..._

Everything is fading. Alex turns, and meets my eyes.

_Et vers le bas viendra bébé, berceau et tous._

My heart stops beating.

* * *

_Sorry for the cliffhanger. One of these days I'll figure out how to get to the ending I have in mind._


	5. Static

_Legal Disclaimer: Lost not mine, as usual._

_Personal Disclaimer: I **do** know where I am going with this. But next time, would you please remind me to actually plot out my story before I start to write? It's like cooking rice, you start with a tiny kernal and it just keeps growing and growing and growing..._

* * *

**Static**

_There is piercing cold all around. Everything is white. White, and bathed in a restless fog that seems to be flowing backwards. _

_I float upon it, and for one perfect moment, I wonder if death has finally taken me. Not to heaven or hell, just to sweetly, blissfully dissolve in the blank insenscience of afterlife..._

_But no. I have not been finished._

"_Master," whispers the man who but hours ago was a boy called Alex, "What is our task?"_ _His thin, breathy wisp of a voice trembles, and suddenly, I am flooded with terrible, irrevocable, inconceivable feeling. I hate this thing, this once-child who rests against me cold and empty and drives me in this endless chase. The hatred seethes in me like acid, painful in it's sickening, swollen sweetness. And yet..._

_And yet I love him as well._

_I love him as only a suffering soul can manage. I love him as one who wanders in the labyrinth of death and then discovers that he is not alone forever. He is my anchor, my armor. Even as he is my destruction, he embodies my savior._

_This twin-bladed sword writhes within me, so irresistibly, awfully, brilliantly powerful that I cannot conceive of resistance. I burn for an action to alleviate this terrible acknowledgment. I would kill him, this sentient figure against me, in mercy and in vengeance, if only I had a form with which to do so._

_And as I shift so slightly in the swell of emotion, I perceive for the first time that we have been bound together. Thousands upon thousands of gossamer golden threads encircle us from our necks to our ankles. I choke back horror as recognition of those strands thunders through me, and I suddenly, finally understand the role I have played in writing my own doom. _

_Blame swirls about me, vague and virulent. I shove it aside, refusing to drown in it's seething tides. I will follow this through. I will see my end._

_Alex waits against me, still but for the occasional twitch of his spirit. Our very souls are inescapably sealed together, locked by the terrible destiny that will swallow us whole._ _Yet how different we are. His ignorance is what buoys him, what keeps him complete, while I float in the cresting of wave after wave of terrible understanding._

_He wants to know, but there will be no answers given._ _He will know_ _when he must, and not before. He cannot understand the finality, that there is no need for preparation or even for thought. Our actions are rote, blank fulfillments of Fate's eternal dictation. _

_And I will go as they wish, I have decided. But I will not go before._

_

* * *

_

_A hard jerk. A violent twist._

_Noise..._

_Then, color._

* * *

We are falling, falling too hard and too fast to pull out. The aircraft door is jammed. My knuckles are white, gripping the controls of the aircraft so hard that there are gouges in the thin rough leather.

"Mayday! Mayday!" I scream into the transmitter. "_Itasca_, do you copy? We have lost our destination target! Mayday!"

The only answer is the earsplitting shriek of empty, hopeless static.

The aircraft is spinning, whirling in a relentless tornado of sound and speed. I cannot even tell which direction we are plummeting. I twist every knob, savagely wrench every lever in a desperate attempt to right the plane before we crash. I can feel Freddie's gaze piercing my battered helmet. He doesn't cry out, but he twists around to grip my shoulder from behind. His touch is warm and solid, and blameless.

Hot, acid tears blind my eyes and burn my cheeks. Only 7,000 miles left, and we were going to die? All those endless years, those hot, painful, blood stained years , only to fail within sight of posterity?

"Around the world," people would say, "but 7,000 miles short."

A wail of grief tears my throat.

I curl into crash position and await the impact.


End file.
